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Home Sweet Home in Blacktip Reef

6/17/2013

From Calypso, the 500-pound green sea turtle, to blacktip reef sharks, more than 1,200 animals will enter their new home, the $12.5 million Blacktip Reef exhibit at National Aquarium beginning the last week of June, 2013. Over the next few weeks, the National Aquarium team will introduce the animals to their vibrant, coral-filled habitat replicating Indo-Pacific reefs.

Blacktip Reef will offer visitors a breathtaking exhibit full of color, light and movement located in the heart of National Aquarium, Baltimore. It will feature a school of sleek and fast-moving blacktip reef sharks, known for the distinctive and prominent black tips on their fins. These sharks, along with 15 other major marine life species and more than 60 additional varieties of fish, will thrive in this integrated, self-contained ecosystem in the 260,000-gallon exhibit. Blacktip Reef will offer an up close and unique way to experience an environment of sharks and an endangered coral ecosystem without traveling thousands of miles or getting wet.

Guests visiting National Aquarium, Baltimore, will be able to enjoy the exhibit from many vantage points, including a new floor-to-ceiling pop-out viewing window that allows guests to virtually step inside the exhibit and come face-to-face with the magnificent animal species and intricate corals. They will also have the opportunity to engage with National Aquarium experts through daily interactive Blacktip Reef diver presentations and feedings. Informative computer touchscreens throughout the exhibit will provide photos, videos and further facts about the reef ecosystem. At the end of their Blacktip Reef visit, guests can share their experience on a new interactive wall by uploading photos and comments, and by making personal commitments to ocean health.

For more information on Blacktip Reef, including photos and behind-the-scenes video updates of the creation of the exhibit, visit http://aqua.org/blacktip-reef.